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Create A Home Inventory List

Taking inventory of your property yearly is helpful in case a hurricane (or anything else) hits your home.

If a hurricane hits your neighborhood, the damages to your home itself (such as roof leaks) may immediately take priority: they're easy to see and are typically the most prevalent damages you have. But water getting into your home could damage the items inside. Furniture, clothing, electronics, completely and totally destroyed. This can be just as harmful and stressful as many structural damages to your property. Fortunately, most insurance policies include these items under their own coverage, usually labelled on your declarations page as Coverage C (Contents).

But you have a lot of stuff in your home, more than you might think. Documenting it all can be an enormous task, unless you're smart enough to document it before a storm ever hits. Taking an annual inventory of your home ensures that you always know exactly what you have, and it comes with additional benefits as well.

Why bother?

A full inventory of your home may seem like overkill when you haven't experienced damages yet, and it's not often that you lose every single item in your home. But it's also not often that you have to file an insurance claim, yet you still pay your premiums just in case.

Whether a roof leak from a hurricane destroys your TV, a burst pipe floods the kitchen and stains the table, or a vandal breaks into your home and goes wild, a record of these items makes it easy to report what needs to be cleaned, repaired, or replaced. And in the event of a total loss (such as a large fire), you can just submit your inventory list in its entirety to your insurance company.

Doing this before the damages doesn't just make the job easier after the storm hits: taking inventory before a loss reduces your stress levels immediately after the loss occurs. All damages to your property can be incredibly stressful and negatively affect your quality of life. Having this one thing already done in advance means one less thing to worry about while you're trying to get your life back to normal.

There's an app for that.

Taking full inventory is quicker and easier than you might think with the right tools.

There are many phone apps that will make this a breeze. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) launched an app in April 2021 for this exact purpose (called NAIC Home Inventory), and this is the app I personally use myself. But you have plenty of other options for apps.

Go room by room.

Using any inventory app, go room by room and take pictures of every item.

And I mean every item:

  • Furniture

  • Appliances

  • Electronics

  • Clothing

  • Athletic equipment

  • Silverware

  • Office supplies

  • Toiletries

  • Paintings

  • Photo albums

  • Anything you paid for or you believe has value

Label each item with as much detail as you can. Leave fields empty if you don't recall the answers, but try to at least describe the item, brand, price, and minor details. Is your bedding cotton or silk? Is that cuckoo clock an antique? Is your soap dollar store quality or luxury salon quality? Do you know what games are in your video game console's internal storage, or on its SD card? Details matter here, so don't breeze over anything potentially important.

"...go room by room and take pictures of every item."

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Tip #1 - Don't do this all at once.

This may be physically and mentally simple, but doing it for hours on end can be tiring. So don't do this all in one day unless you know you won't get overwhelmed. Take on one or two rooms a day and you'll be done in a week or two (depending on the size of your home).

When I did this myself, it took me an average of forty minutes per room. And since I don't live in a particularly big house, I had my entire home inventoried within a week. Six hours well spent.

Never lose track of anything again!

Naturally, the main reason for taking inventory is to protect yourself in the event disaster strikes your property. But there are other benefits that make this worth doing.

For one thing, you'll never lose anything again! If you can't find that dang lint roller or don't

know which bin in the attic has your Halloween decorations, just check your app and you'll see where to look first.

This also serves as a security measure. If you're convinced that something's missing from your home after a party or when you come home from vacation, check your inventory app. You'll figure out very quickly if anything from the living room was taken recently without your knowledge.

Tip #2 - Take inventory every year.

You should update your home's inventory yearly to keep it up to date.

Don't worry, it doesn't take nearly as long the second time! After you do it the first time, your home should already be fully detailed within the app of your choice. Unless you're doing major remodeling, you shouldn't have too many new items in each room in any given year. Your annual update should realistically take no more than an hour or two.

Updating this yearly means that any losses that occur will be backed up by a recent inventory. That historical record of the contents of your home creates irrefutable documentation of the damages to your property. It also means that the other benefits of taking inventory are strengthened as well.

When doing your annual update, don't forget to remove items that you no longer have in your home! The last thing you want to do is ask your insurance carrier to pay for damaged clothing when you actually sold it years prior.

Just do it!

This may be optional, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Taking inventory is an easy and free way to protect everything within your home and increase your quality of life. Check out NAIC Home Inventory, or look into other apps that can document your contents for you.